Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor.

Published in Raritan, Rutgers University Press, 2021. “BBC News Online, Monday, 12 November 2018. Today’s news is black with ash. A wildfire burns in Malibu, the town of Paradise is razed, and the Californian sky is dark with smoke. In a Mexican city, two men mistaken for kidnappers are set alight. An article with the headline ‘Judgment Day’ tells not of fire and brimstone but of incendiary politics. There is crossfire, too, another kind of kindling, which does not so much burn as inflame: ‘Israel-Gaza Violence Erupts After Covert Op Killings’.”

(the image pressing very hard)

press your front surface and back surface

toward each other and begin to ignore or

block the thickness of the wall. (remove

the wall)

“The country is falling apart,” our parents tell us. But we fail to understand the depth of their pessimism. We stopped reading the newspaper long ago, and now only flip to the back page to see our horoscopes and do the crossword. A lack of worry or interest, six letters down. The obstacles in your path are not as daunting as they first appear.

The guests are eating cake.

“This icing is remarkably light,” says the other M. He is wearing a pink shirt the colour of my cranberry cocktail.

“And not ridiculously sweet,” G adds. He is wearing a sheet as a toga in honour of the night’s theme, spring by way of Botticelli’s Primavera.